Should Endangered Animals Receive More Protection?

Brian Ai, 7th Grader || 11.9.2018

Fin whales. Asian tigers. California condors. What do you think of when you hear these animal names? There are a lot of endangered animals out there in the world. Is it right for humans to leave them to die off? Endangered animals shouldn’t be left to fend for themselves, and humans should take responsibility and care for them.

Endangered animals are endangered mostly because of us humans. If we cause their endangerment, then it should be our responsibility to save them and to protect them. Over the years, poachers and outward donkey faces kept killing animals for their own profit, causing so many to die. Explorers moving to the west back in the 18 and 1900s killed millions of buffalo, the Native American’s primary source of food. There were only 50 buffalo in the country a few years after, where millions of Natives had been pushed onto reservations.

If humans don’t save endangered animals, then they will probably go extinct and vanish from the face of the earth for the rest of the universe’s existence. It’s a loss not only to humanity, but to the entire ecosystem since it’s not possible (yet) to bring back an extinct species. Since most endangered animals are only endangered in the first place because of humans, we have no one to blame except ourselves when they go extinct and we didn’t do anything to stop it, and then the entire universe from that point onward will be down a species.

Endangered animals may negatively affect the food chain. Some species of animals are extremely dependent on a singular food source, and others rely on some species to keep the food chain in balance. If one animal runs out of another animal to eat, it will find a substitute, which will eliminate that animal, and so on and so forth until WE are the only source of food they have. Each organism in the food chain depend on their predator and prey, and if one species of predator dies off, there will be too many prey species in a food chain. That excess amount of prey will outnumber their own food source, which will destroy that food source and then causing more of a chain reaction. They will eat too much of their food, which will make it scarce. Scarce food sources for animals will make it worse for them. The prey animals will soon die off along with their own food source. We need predators to keep population control, which is a good thing in the food chain if you think about it.

Each species of animals should be treated equally, and they should have a home that they can survive in on their own. Humans have been destroying the land that thousands of animals live in, causing them to become endangered, we should be the ones to help them thrive once more.